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KDE's Plasma To Be Reworked, Use More OpenGL

10-14-2010, 10:00 AM

Phoronix: KDE's Plasma To Be Reworked, Use More OpenGL

While we already know that by the time KDE Software Compilation 4.7 rolls around it may optionally support OpenGL 3.0 within the KWin compositing manager, but with time KDE's Plasma may begin using more OpenGL too. Aaron Seigo has written a lengthy blog post about what he hopes to achieve with Plasma and its library going a few releases out into the future. This includes a rather extensive rework of Plasma and its drawing, which would include the use of more OpenGL to allow for greater hardware acceleration...

BTW, I am not all about Office suits or something. That was just the example that popped up first. I just backspaced the rest of the list because it doesn't make the point any better. Also if the KDE team would like to hear criticism I think they can find enough already on the internetz.

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All of this work though would result in a new library (libplasma2) that would be source and binary incompatible with the current Plasma library used by KDE SC 4.x. Nearly everything would need to be ported over to QML as part of this endeavor.

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I would appreciate it much more if they would develop a kick-ass office suit or something else actually useful that would drastically improve the desktop experience as a whole.

Extra shiny buttons are overrated.

There are some applications which are out of range for other DEs like Amarok and DigiKam. Koffice matures and Krita is becoming a wonderful application for drawers. It has some important advantages over GIMP:

The problem you're according to is related to people who do what they like to do. We can't force anyone to work on this while he prefers working on something else. I'd force (but I can't) Gnome devs to make some useful music application. Some may like Rhythmbox, but I can't stand its playlist. Comparing KDE to Gnome KDE is clearly a winner in terms of applications, Firefox, OOo, GIMP, Inkskape aren't Gnome applications, but just use Gtk toolkit.

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You should read the Aaron's blog. It's worth to notice these changes should be completely invisible to end users.

What 'should be' and the actual outcome are not always the same. In the end it probably will be visible to end users in a not so pleasant way. We'll see a lot of angry KDE users, then we'll see a blogpost from the KDE devs shifting the blame to others (God forbid that for once they take some responsibility for their own cock-ups!) In short: L'histoire se r?p?te.